"No, thank you," he responded, taking a small brier-wood pipe out of his trousers-pocket. "I don't go much on cigars; I can git more solid comfort out of a pipe, I reckon." After he had filled his pipe and pulled at it half a dozen times, he said to Stone, suddenly: "Say! is there any show in town to-night? I've got a night off, you know, and I've allus heerd that for shows New York could lay over everything in sight. You've been to this town before, haven't you?"
Stone admitted that this was not his first visit to New York.
"I reckoned so," was Clay Magruder's comment. "An' so you know your way here, an' I don't; there's too many trails crossin' for me to keep to the road. Suppose we go to the show together—ef there is a show in town?"
Stone bought an evening paper, and looked over the list of amusements. He wondered what would best suit the tastes of his new friend.
"There's Deadwood Dick's Wild Western Exhibition at Niblo's—" he began.
"Deadwood Dick?" interrupted the cowboy, in great contempt; "he's a holy show, he is. He's a fraud; that's what he is. An' is he the only thing we can take in to-night?"
"Oh no," the sailor replied. "There are half a dozen other things to see. There's a comic opera at the Garden Theatre, with a variety show up in the roof garden afterwards."
"A comic opera—singing, and funny business, and pretty girls, I suppose?" said the Westerner. "I reckon we'd might as well go there—unless you'd rather go somewhere else."
"The comic opera and the roof garden will just suit me," Stone responded.
They were fortunate in getting good seats at the theatre, where they arrived as the curtain was rising on the first act of "Patience." Even in midsummer the attire of Stone's new friend attracted some attention, and a group of pretty girls in the row behind them nudged each other as he came in and giggled. In their hearts they were glad to look at so handsome a man.